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Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
801–810 of 833 posts
Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
#802Earlier quoted context omitted.
DVDs and VHS are more or less the same resolution. And depending on encode quality some DVDs can be even worse, although unlikely to be a problem for mainstream releases.
This is an overly reductive argument. Resolution is only a relatively small part of the quality. Generally people value sound quality much higher, which DVD brought to CD level, and Blu-Ray has exactly the same sound quality (nobody has speakers for the 7.1 surround sound). VHS also had interlacing, and older VHS also had plenty of the tape artifacts polluting the image, DVDs had none of those. At the end of the VHS…
Lol most people buy an expensive TV for the display features and then use the crappy TV speakers that come with it. They do NOT care about sound. AT ALL.
And DVDs have interlacing too. True, they add the ability to not store the repeated fields from a telecine but that's mostly because the lossy codec would otherwise fuck things up even more. And not all movies even make use of this and even more don't use it for 100% of the frames.
And while DVD's don't have analogue artifacts, they do have a VERY BAD lossy codec with noticeable blocking. Add to that that contemporary encoders didn't even use the limited encoding space of that codec very well.
DVDs winning has nothing to do with quality but was all about convenience. Smaller package size. Don't have to be rewinded. Can be pressed for duplication instead of having to run through a long tape.
Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
#803Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is very much not true and even less true when the blu-ray release comes from a new master that isn't limited by older technology.
If you are right and I am wrong, then that very much goes against the public perception. The switch to DVD was pretty quick and universally pretty well received. So the public was very much willing to spend their money and time to make the switch for the extra quality (or maybe the convenience) of DVD. The switch to Blu-Ray is still ongoing now what 20 years later, and it looks like it will never be complete. In the…
DVDs winning has nothing to do with quality but was all about convenience. Smaller package size. Don't have to be rewinded. Can't be entangled like a tape. Can be pressed for duplication instead of having to run through a long tape.
Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
#804Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, you can import blu-rays from other countries when streaming releases have geo restrictions.
Like DVD before it, Blu-ray includes region locking as a feature (but apparently ~70% of disks don't bother with it, notably Paramount and Universal don't). Non-locked disks are marked as ABC (A is the Americas and Asia, B is Europe/Africa/Aus/NZ, C is Russia/India/China).
Libredrive says: "that's cute"
Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
#805Earlier quoted context omitted.
Be aware that many (most) new games with physical disks can also be taken away (see Concord).
Concord is explicitly an online-only FPS. I don't think that's representative of most games.
As with everything it depends what you class. If you went on raw number of games you only really count Mobile/Steam slop. If you correct for most played games then Roblox, Candy Crush, Minecraft, PUBG, LoL, Fortnite these are all games that owning the disc doesn't guarantee anything. If you count AA/AAA releases on PS5 it seems unlikely that most discs will ever be unplayable (though I think that is always at Sony's and the publisher's whim)
Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
#806Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's interesting how attitudes towards this are so different across industries. Jeff Gerstmann is a fairly well known and well connected video game journalist and he straight up does streams where he plays emulators using romsets clearly downloaded from the internet.
When an industry works directly for those rights holders, it's not that interesting of a difference compared to those to do not.
For fair amount of time Giant Bomb was owned by CBS and during that time I saw plenty of emulators getting used.
Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
#807Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we should encourage this framing of "monopoly" more. You can be a tiny company and still be a monopoly. If you're the only grocery store in a (walkable) town where many elderly people don't own a car, you're a monopoly. If you're the only company allowed to sell beer at a football game (that doesn't allow fans to bring liquids into the stadium), you're a monopoly. If you're a school cantine, and school rules…
None of your examples pass any of the checks for a monopoly unless you twist the definition of "market" to be the narrowest possible. Situational exclusivity is not the same as a monopoly, and these examples don't pass the hypothetical monopolist test or the cellophane fallacy.
Their definition: if a substantial group of buyers has no reasonable choice of seller, it's a monopoly situation
Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
#808Earlier quoted context omitted.
The writing has been on the wall for a decade now for gaming being a purely rental-driven, consumer-antagonistic segment of the software market. People have been talking about "walking away" for at least that long. The soles of those walking shoes are as thick and un-worn as they've ever been.
I'm old enough to remember when people bemoaned the death of physical media, and saw Steam as the death of PC gaming. Like all things, this too shall pass.
Yes. The new generation will grow up without ever owning any media, and will not be able to conceive of the idea of owning media.
Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
#809Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is a weird marketing strategy. They must feel free to do as they please since they know consumers are trapped. I've been on PlayStation family since PS2, and used to think I was married to it, with my game library and my player character stuff/gear/creations in various games. But the platform no longer lets me play many of those games, anyway, whether due to console gen or server shutdowns. And nobody cares ab…
Server shutdowns are a problem regardless of the platform. There used to be a time when PC games allowed you to connect to random servers. These days Minecraft is the only one that still allows it. And even there, Microsoft go hard on the upselling of their Realms. Some studios kill their servers after just a couple of years. Even for games that are online first.
This week a Microsoft representative told Congress that all Minecraft servers except the ones sponsored by Microsoft are illegal piracy.
Re: Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
#810Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's sadly not stupid from their perspective
Except it really is. I don't see how businesses don't understand how this sort of anti-customer predatory behavior, MBA stuff, is directly driving reduced sales. The PS5, for instance, has only managed 96 million sales. For contrast the PS2 managed 160 million sales to a smaller market with much fiercer competition. And I'm one of those tens of millions opting out. The PS2 felt like a great consumer-focused value. Mo…
So they sold half as many. The next question should be: did they make more than twice as much profit per sale? I suspect the answer is yes.